


Landlocked Shores

by isleofapplepies



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst and Humor, Arthur Pendragon Returns, Falling In Love, Immortal Merlin, Injury, M/M, Man Out of Time, Modern Era, Once and Future King
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 00:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1531103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isleofapplepies/pseuds/isleofapplepies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin has moved on.</p><p>It took him ages and it was pure agony at times but he’s finally doing better and learning who he is when his entire being doesn't revolve obsessively around one person. So when his past swans back into his life, looking at him as though they last saw each other only yesterday, and utterly clueless about life in the 21st century, Merlin knows that with just the smallest of slips he might lose everything he’s been working for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The next time Merlin sees him Arthur’s body lies exposed in the cold harsh light of the operating room. Shards of bone rise from his splintered ribcage like cliffs out of the sea, with loose ribbons of flesh draped over them. 

The decade by Arthur’s side was a mere fleeting moment yet Merlin remembers him at once. In the ashtray dipped hues of pink painted across Arthur’s eyelids Merlin recognises the dawn on the lake of Avalon that pierced his heart with a bright spear of frost. In the frantic series of bleeps coming from the EKG machine Merlin hears Arthur’s beating heart.

His fingers tighten around a haemostat. His hands are steady. 

~~~

The last thing Arthur recalls is hazy and barely there but it’s all he has to hold onto in the sickening void pressing on him from all directions.

He succumbs to the warmth radiating from Merlin’s hands as they cup his face. Merlin’s hot breath brushes his skin with soothing words that drown in the shattering sound of Merlin’s heartbreak. The rich pink of Merlin’s trembling lips. _Stay with me_.   

The memory stretches throughout Arthur’s numb body, slowly turning its attention to every individual cell. It digs into his wounds and reignites the pain lurking underneath a mantle of death that had very nearly shrouded his consciousness forever.

Arthur gives out a raspy gasp. His eyes fly open and air forces its way down to his lungs in a handful of scorching gulps. Lights. Too bright. Sharp. Arthur bares his teeth in a disgusted grimace and with eyes screwed shut presses a side of his face into a pillow.

There’s a name jammed in his throat. It’s meant to roll right off his tongue in a perfect blend of adoration and annoyance. Instead it’s stuck there in scratched-up vowels and broken consonants that burn like salt in his raw throat.

Arthur hisses in pain.

“Easy there,” says a kind voice. Arthur opens his eyes again, this time slowly to adjust to the light, and lets his sight scan his surroundings.

The searing light subsides and reveals a woman in a white coat watching him from across an unfamiliar room. She’s poised at the edge of a plain metal chair, dark hair tied back in a messy bun. Shadows pool underneath her eyes, only spread thinner by the warm smile of her lips.

 “Where am I?” Arthur forces out a croak. His eyes water with the effort the three simple words took.

“In a hospital,” the stranger replies. “You had a nasty run-in with a lorry. But you’ll be happy to hear we patched you up quite nicely and there are no important bits missing.” She raises a hand to cover a yawn. “Sorry. It’s been a long weekend. The important part is that you’re alive and should make a full recovery in no time. You were quite lucky, considering.”

Arthur blinks, running it all through his mind once, twice. “Right.”

Gradually he becomes aware of measured beeps coming from somewhere in the room. Searching for the source he rolls his head to a side on the pillow. Some kind of water skin hangs over his head, dripping liquid down a thin tube. His eyes follow its trajectory all the way down to his arm.

“Let’s leave the needle in there a little longer, shall we?”

Arthur’s head snaps back. His fingers remain curled around the transparent tube leading underneath his skin. Corners of the woman’s mouth twitch in amusement.

“I know that in films people jump out of the hospital bed tearing tubes right off, but I wouldn’t recommend it in real life, and certainly not in your case.”

“What is it?” Arthur growls. Or attempts to, anyway. The question tumbles over his lips in a hoarse whisper. It’s almost embarrassing.

“Just an IV, no need to panic.”

“I’m not panicking.”

“Of course not.” She delivers the words with a fond tilt of her head, as though appeasing a complaining child. The smile slips off her lips and with a soft groan and her forehead all scrunched-up she pushes herself up from the chair. “These are all standard post-surgery procedures, Mr Knight,” she says. “We’re doing everything in our power to make sure you will be able to walk out of here as good as new. I promise you, you are in good hands.” She pauses to think, biting her lip as if trying to hold back words. “You were lucky Dr Emrys was on call,” she says at last. “He is without doubt our finest surgeon. Not that the others are substandard in any way, we employ only... Well, either way, he is the best.”

“Emrys?” Arthur repeats softly. The annoying beeps increase in frequency, making it harder to think straight. He heard that name before, and when one finds himself in a place this foreign and unfamiliar a hazy memory is better than none. Arthur picks at the name like a loose thread in a coat, eager for the seams to fall apart.

He remembers a voice. First mocking and cold, dripping with contempt. _Emrys_. The name is wrapped in a faint buzz of words he cannot discern the meaning of. Then again the same voice, the name an isolated shrieking cry ripped out of a woman’s lungs by force.   

Morgana’s voice.

Oh.

“Merlin?”  

A surge of blurred images floods his mind with the realization and Arthur presses the heel of his palm against the stabbing pain in his forehead. His sister, _his Morgana_ was dead.

Mordred ran him through with a sword. His own knight.

And Merlin was a sorcerer.

 _Merlin_. A sorcerer.

Arthur grinds his teeth against the wave of nausea that grips him by the stomach and forces himself to focus.

“Where is he?”

The woman’s lips twitch with inexplicable amusement. „Merlin?“ she says, a note of laughter in her voice. “Are we talking about the same person?”

That’s what Arthur is trying to figure out, isn’t it. He shrugs his shoulders against the sheets. “Tall skinny sort of fellow, noticeable ears, irrepressibly cheerful at the least opportune times? A surprisingly good secret keeper for a man who doesn’t seem able to ever shut up?”

“You got the looks right,” the woman laughs. “The rest of it... eh, not so much.” She narrows her eyes and her mouth twists as if she were about to say something but thought better of it at the last second.

“So he’s here? Emrys?” Arthur pushes himself up by his elbows into a nearly sitting position. His eyes search the room as though he expects Merlin to jump out from behind a curtain and shout “surprise” in close proximity to Arthur’s pounding head.

“He was here.”

“Was,” Arthur repeats in spite of himself, desperately unsuccessful in his attempt to keep the disappointment from registering in his voice.

The woman smiles. “Give the man some rest. He spent a good portion of Friday night reconstructing your chest cavity and setting your ribs, and he hasn’t stopped since.” Her smile grows deeper, fonder, and her smart eyes reveal a hint of curiosity. She’s dying to ask Arthur questions, that much is plain to see. Instead, she answers some of his. “He’s in the doctors’ lounge, just as he’s been ordered. Whether he finally passed out of exhaustion or is drinking himself stupid is a mystery I’ll soon have the pleasure to discover myself. But he is _your_ doctor, and he will be back with you soon enough.”

Arthur lowers himself back onto the bed, not quite happy with the answer he was given, but a tad calmer for the moment.

“So who are you again?” he turns his attention to his companion.

“Doctor Miles. Risa Miles.”

“You’re a physician?”

She laughs again. “I’m a surgeon. Though in fact we’re mostly butchers, John and I. Patch up, wait a bit, send off to another ward and wash up for a fresh batch.”

Arthur mulls it over. “Is there a war?” he asks. His eyelids are heavy and the room around him swims in fog. He tries to fight it.

“A war? Here in Britain? No, goodness, no.” Her voice is soothing and nearly sweet now, as if she were talking to a confused child, but Arthur notices the growing concern underlining her words. “Everything’s fine and dandy. For the most part, anyway. There’s always something. But that’s politics and nothing to do with us right here and now.”

She seems to consider him for a while. “I’ll send a nurse to give you your pain meds and then you can get some rest, alright?” she says. “Just one more thing. Can you confirm the name John gave us when they brought you in?”

Arthur has to force his eyes open, blinking at the woman in confusion. “Who?”

“John. Dr Emrys.” There’s that subtle hint of curiosity in her voice again, like she has to do her best to restrain herself from attacking him with an endless line of questions.

“Oh,” Arthur says. “Yeah. Him.”

“He identified you as Arthur Knight. Is that your name?”

He really shouldn’t have to think about that for so long. Or at all. But the fog is setting on his mind again and he wants to correct Risa, just to add that yes, he is a knight, and his name is Arthur but if she wants all the details she should have his last name too, right? Shouldn’t he let her know he is the king of Camelot?

“It’s okay if you can’t answer now,” he hears Risa say. She sounds distant, her voice muffled by a thick curtain of low humming noises.

 “Yes, that is my name,” he mumbles, just half-aware of her presence at this point. “Arthur.”   

His thoughts jerk back to a half-abandoned idea from before, and begin to circle it like vultures. He could be wrong in his assumptions of who this Emrys is. What if it’s a complete stranger? Risa recognized Arthur’s description of Merlin though. Sort of.

He wants to get up from this bed. He needs to. But there’s a dull pain throbbing in his chest. His left knee and shoulder feel like they’re being slowly crushed by an anvil and Arthur doesn’t have the strength to move. A ripple of terror runs through him at that realization; momentarily dissolving the mist around him and throwing the room into focus with perfect clarity. Just long enough for him to register that Risa has left. Someone else is in the room, fiddling with the tubes by his bedside. Arthur turns his head in hope of seeing a familiar face, his throat clenching tight around the name trapped in it.

“Don’t worry, luv, you’ll drift off to sleep in no time, ‘mkay?” The voice is not familiar, nor is the now again distorted side of a face hovering above him. “You need plenty of rest. We’re right in the next room—“

Arthur doesn’t bother listening beyond that. As he drags his sluggish thoughts back through his conversation with Risa, Arthur’s eyes close and his aching body sinks into the softness of the bed.

When the door opens and Dr Emrys rests his weary head against its frame with a soft sigh, Arthur is already long asleep.

~~~

Merlin’s no stranger to waiting. He remembers a time when he did little else but wait for a miracle to bring Arthur back.

He expected him to return in a blaze of battle, shining bright like cities set alight in war. There have been more than enough battles for Arthur to take his pick from.  

But no. Glory of war was too predictable for the once and future king of... of what actually? The borders have shifted beyond recognition, and Albion wasn’t the same place Arthur had left hundreds of years ago. Did this make him the once and future king of the entire United Kingdom? Well that was a thought and a half. Merlin could not see the Windsor dynasty taking kindly to such suggestion. And besides, if Merlin was being completely honest, Britain did not need a monarch anyway.

Not Queen Elizabeth II, nor Arthur Pendragon.

Arthur who arrived to Glastonbury hospital in an ambulance after the paramedics scraped him off a van’s windshield. This, Merlin had to admit, never crossed his mind as a possible manner of Arthur’s return. To tell the truth Merlin stopped thinking about it ages ago. Like they say, the watched pot never boils. Or the watched lake never spits out any royals. Whatever.

And yet, here is Arthur; his bandaged chest rising and falling with each steady breath, lips slightly parted in his sleep.

Careful not to cut himself Merlin turns a shard of metal over in his hands. A shard that, over thousand years ago, neither medicine nor magic could have stopped from sinking into Arthur’s heart. Now it rests in Merlin’s fingers, small and speckled with dry blood.

Merlin has forgotten most of the first few decades of his life. He no longer remembers the name of the village he was born in, nor where it used to be. He knows his mother was a kind woman who he loved very much but he has to watch himself in the mirror for the longest time if he wants to put together an image of what she might have looked like. He likes to think he has her eyes but he’ll never know for sure.

For Arthur he had no frame of reference so the details of his face soon became nothing but a haze of exaggerated memories, smudged and caricature-like in Merlin’s early attempts to keep the memory alive. For all he can tell the Arthur from Merlin’s memories and the one sleeping just few steps away may not share a single facial feature. Yet there is no doubt in Merlin’s mind that they are one and the same.

The shard in his hand proves it.

Like an electric current a nervous energy is surging through Merlin’s body. Sharp edges brush his skin as he turns the sword fragment in his fingers.

Dizzy, with beads of cold sweat collecting on his forehead, Merlin sucks in a lungful of air but doesn’t focus enough to keep his breathing steady and even, so the next breath he inhales is shallow and the one after that follows too quickly, and the one after that is the same and the one after that and the one after that.

Merlin is about ready to jump out of his skin, he bloody well is.

His shaking hands drop the shard and it rings loudly against the floor. Fuck.

As he stands still and stares, in the steady beeps of Arthur’s heart monitor Merlin notices how frantic has his own heartbeat become. The thought is fleeting and hardly registers in his mind apart from another unfocused attempt to take a deep breath.

Merlin has done nothing but breathe in the centuries that passed. One lungful after another that kept him standing while dead bodies piled around him.

What was the point of controlled evenly spaced breathing? Even the gas in the trenches could not kill Merlin. So why try to supress the panic creeping in his bones? What harm could it do that he hasn’t lived through already?

Dropping down into a chair by the bedside Merlin snags the shard off the floor and pockets it. With one foot on the seat’s edge he hugs his knee with one arm and leans into it a little.

Seeing again Arthur’s ancient scars, the thick jagged lines rising from his skin and the pale ghosts of his first battles, made the reality shift around Merlin. He’d witnessed many of them come to existence. Even now he recognises the marks left by the Questing Beast.

The knowledge of this virtual stranger’s skin stirs trepidation deep in Merlin’s stomach. He cannot remember where he lived two centuries ago but a sliver of damaged and healed over skin has the power to pour life back into the dry bones of his memories of Camelot?

Every moment now Arthur could open his eyes.

Merlin wants to leave. What got into him, going back to Britain this decade? What is he going to do if Arthur takes one look at Merlin and recognises him?

His thoughts, heavy with a deep sense of responsibility, chain Merlin to Arthur’s side just like the words of the Great Dragon did that first night in Camelot.

Trusting dragons. Horrible mistake.

This time it’s not a prophecy that forces Merlin to stay.

If this really is Arthur, the very same Arthur Merlin knew centuries ago, then he is alone. Alone in the 21st century England. Without a home or money. Just the “welcome to the new age” sign the van pressed into his bones.

After the surgery, awakening to the shock he’d suppressed before, Merlin rushed to inspect the clothes Arthur was wearing when they brought him in. There was no chainmail or pieces of armour that would betray Arthur’s origin. The torn tunic and breeches were decidedly old-fashioned but in Glastonbury, the holy city of new-agey hocus-pocus loving folk, Arthur might pass for a regular modern age man.

Well, Merlin knows better. As he held Arthur’s blood-stained tunic in his hands he could have sworn it hummed with a familiar energy. He’d washed this very tunic in hand dozens of times and its ancient threads responded to his touch. Almost like a sentient organism. Which was nonsense, obviously. It was just clothes.

Arthur spent an incredible amount of time in Avalon, though. So perhaps, Merlin thinks, the energy thrumming through the fabric had to do with that. Like a timestamp, he supposes. Or a fingerprint. Traces of his own touch were preserved in that tunic, the last trembling slide of hands that smoothed out the creases of Arthur’s clothes as he lay still in his funeral boat.

It shouldn’t feel so familiar. The skin cells of Merlin’s hands never touched this piece of clothing. Arthur was no more than a blip in the forever extending path of Merlin’s life. He shouldn’t remember.

Dizzy from the heavy smell of Arthur’s blood and the worn feel of the fabric, Merlin left the clothes behind at pre-op. He needed to leave, to run away from the few short years of his impossible life that came back to haunt him. There were other urgent cases to keep him occupied and away from the presence of the so-called Once and Future King.

But eventually he ran out of legal hours and Risa threatened to lock him in the doctor’s lounge if he gave her a reason. He’s obviously having some psychotic breakdown and he’s not leaving here until he gets some sleep, or does he want her to sedate him? Does he?   

So here he sits now, couple of hours of restless slumber later, eyes burning and still dry with fatigue. Silent tremors run through his chest like earthquakes, threatening to split his ribs. His palms are sweaty. He wipes them on his coat before resting his face in his hands.

The last time Merlin was in Britain stars were falling from the sky. They shattered bones and crashed bricks into dust and though the streets were lit with roaring fire Merlin knew for certain that it was Albion’s darkest hour.

He wished upon a falling star and watched it tear a child apart. As the young life dimmed and went out like a candle so did Merlin’s last hopes that there was some truth in the Dragon’s words.

After all, this wasn’t Albion anymore, was it?

Soon after that Merlin left the country for nearly a century.

In stillness of the hospital room Arthur makes a small grunting noise. A wrinkle pushes his brows together and makes Merlin freeze in his chair.

There is a myriad of things he could say. They swirl under his tongue and when he swallows they clog his throat and now Merlin can’t breathe. His vision blurs. He closes his eyes for a while. It’s as close to running away as he can get.

“Merlin?”

The word is fractured, rough around the edges. It has been about fifteen centuries, give or take, since someone called him by that name. Since he heard it wrapped in Arthur’s voice. A voice smaller than what Merlin’s faded memories of Arthur had built it up to be. Unimpressive. There’s nothing special about it, it’s just a voice like any other.

With a shaky breath passing through his lips Merlin looks up at the man who is watching him from the hospital bed. Cuts and bruises paint his face in purple and dirty pink welts.

“Hi,” Merlin croaks. An awkward smile pulls at his lips and simultaneously a sick wave of self-contempt rises from the pits of his stomach. Of course he would smile. Of course he would act like he’s been here all night crying his eyes out over Arthur’s broken body. That’s how he spent his time in Camelot, isn’t it?

He tries to compose himself, to fight against whatever it is that’s forcing him to revert back to the learnt dynamics of Merlin & Arthur. His eyes sting.

Arthur makes a half-hearted attempt to sit up and the pained grimace he makes before slumping back tells Merlin more than enough about the shape he’s in.

“Merlin, what happened? What is this place?”

Ah. Time to plant the seeds of a culture shock. Merlin scratches his ear absently. He really doesn’t want to be here. He’s lived dozens upon dozens of regular lifetimes and if there once was a time when he was aching with need for this exact moment, well it wasn’t now. Now he’s tired. Turned inside out, as though when he sewed Arthur’s wounds up he opened some of his own.

It has to be done though.

“You died,” Merlin says without engaging eye contact. His palms are more interesting to look at than a man returning from beyond the grave. “And as far as I know you had been dead for centuries.” His throat runs dry and whatever was coming next is jammed in there like in broken clockwork.

A momentary flick of his eyes over to Arthur shows him a sceptically furrowed brow and a mouth slightly agape. A hot torrent of hysterical laughter bubbles in Merlin’s chest at the sight but doesn’t spill over. There’s not a whole lot to laugh about, honestly.

“I died?” Arthur says, looking at Merlin like he’s lost his mind. “I’m dead?”

“No,” Merlin answers slowly. “And you can trust me on that, I’m a doctor.” He would smirk at his own joke but the muscles of his face are drawn taut and uncooperative. “This is my workplace,” he explains. “I… heal people. I got pretty good at it over the years.”

“Great,” Arthur nods. “Did you say I was dead for centuries?”

Oh right. Merlin supposes that’s a rather distracting piece of information. Well, this could take a while.

He shrugs. “Couple hundred years, yes. This is the 21st century in what you knew as Albion. It’s called Britain now. Quite a few things have changed while you were away.” He watches Arthur with hesitation, uncertain whether he should ask what brought Arthur back. Why is he here now?

Why at all?

“After what passed at Camlann,” he says instead, “I intended to take you to the Sidhe. To Avalon. They would have saved you had we reached them in time. But since that did not go as planned, I… um… I left you in their care, so to speak. I was told that, uh, that you’d return one day.” He gestures at Arthur’s obvious presence and looks away. His next words are addressed to an empty wall. “Do you—do you remember it? Avalon, I mean.”

Arthur doesn’t reply immediately. His beaten face looks both tired and alert, as though he has to force himself not to pass out in face of a force capable of tearing him in two. As though he wants to look more intimidating than he has any capability of being right now. Merlin knows that look.

“I keep forgetting you’re a sorcerer,” Arthur says in a hollow voice and sinks deeper into the pillow. His eyelids flutter closed and he takes a second or two before he continues in a firm if raspy voice: “No, I don’t remember the place. Nothing solid, anyway. Just Camlann, Morgana… You. Then I’m here and everything in between is like a dream. I can’t recall any of it.”

“Alright,” says Merlin, unsure of what other response he should give. “So, you don’t know what brought you back? Here?”

Arthur seems to think about it. “It wasn’t you?” he asks after a moment.

Merlin laughs and shakes his head. “I don’t have that sort of power.”

“Really?” Arthur raises an eyebrow. Only one, the other is swollen and stitched up. “Didn’t Gaius call you the most powerful sorcerer to ever walk the earth? What happened to that?”

Merlin opens his mouth but no sound comes out. His gaze drops to his hands again where he studies the way his skin stretches over the knuckles as he unwittingly flexes his fingers. He’s forgotten Gaius. Whoever that was, Arthur’s reminder brings just a fuzzy distant feeling. It’s a nice feeling and it stings to know time hollowed and worn it out. It lies in his head like a sweet foil wrapper. Just a piece of rustling paper with no content.

“He did?” Merlin mutters without thinking, eyes still turned downwards. “I don’t have power over life and death.”

There’s a moment of silence, followed by Arthur’s incredulous huff.

Merlin lifts his gaze.

Arthur attempts a nonchalant shrug but the movement lends a pained expression to his features. He blinks, hisses with pain, and then continues in a hoarse voice: “Couple of centuries, you say?”

Merlin nods, waiting for Arthur to go on. Arthur waits for Merlin to connect the dots himself.

“Oh,” Merlin says at last when Arthur’s impatient look gains an annoyed quality. “Oh, you mean…” An erratic gesture to himself earns Merlin a sardonic smile from Arthur.

“This is not what it seems,” Merlin says. “It’s not my doing that I’m still here. I don’t control whether I live or die, believe me, I’ve tried.” The self-deprecating hint of laughter dies on his lips when he catches sight of Arthur’s horror-struck gaze.

“Merlin?” The word is nearly soundless, carefully spoken as though Arthur fears that unwrapping whatever is folded within the name could shatter the reality.

Merlin bites the inside of his cheek angrily. He and his big blabbering mouth. He’s already said more than intended. It would seem that having removed his biggest secret, the sorcery, out of equation left a gaping hole for all his other secrets to fall through.

Inhaling sharply through his nose, Merlin meets Arthur’s questioning gaze with his own. And does not flinch. “There is a reason why human lives are measured in decades and not centuries,” he says and the words come like shards of ice, searing his lips and freezing his mouth. “It’s not pleasant.”

The concern which darkens the blue of Arthur’s eyes forces Merlin out of his chair. That’s about enough for today, he thinks.

“You need rest,” he says. “I have to go now and— and sleep. I’ll be back in a few hours and explain more. In the meantime just sleep and don’t worry about the tubes and machines,” he indicates with a distracted wave of his hand. “They’re there to help you heal. And I suppose I should get you some new clothes,” it occurs to him.

Whatever fate awaits them, making sure Arthur is ready to tackle the 21st century is one thing Merlin can do, and the least he should. Appropriate attire is a part of that. What size does Arthur wear? Oh, bespoke. Well, he can say goodbye to that, Merlin thinks as he eyes Arthur to estimate his clothes size. “I remember you taller,” he lets slip without thinking.

Arthur replies with a roll of his eyes. “I remember you emptying chamber pots,” he retaliates.

Merlin’s lips twitch. “I don’t do that anymore. And we don’t use chamber pots either.”

Oh. Blimey. He’s going to have to explain urinary catheters to Arthur before he leaves. Well if that conversation isn’t going to become the highlight of the day.

“What’s that smile about?” Arthur asks. His brow is furrowed in irate confusion, as though Merlin just told him he was checking for woodworm or that cleaning windows with royal breeches was good both for the glass and the fabric. “Let me guess, you finally got rid of whatever infection was making you hop off into shrubbery every five minutes?”

Merlin frowns. “What are you on about? I never had any infec--- oh, right. Right.” He nods as a rather ridiculous memory emerges. “No, no, peeing difficulties never ranked very high on my list of trouble to deal with. They were just a way to distract you.”

“Distract me,” Arthur repeats in a dead voice, staring Merlin down. A corner of his lips curls in a displeased way that makes Merlin want to vanish from the room already. “With pee breaks.”

“Well, some of them were requested in a genuine need,” Merlin shrugs and somehow he cannot remember if a conversation like this ever featured in the centuries worth of fantasies he had about the day of Arthur’s return. Probably not. Things never went like they were supposed to with Arthur.  Never like he planned.

Arthur lets out a long sigh. He looks like he cannot decide whether he’s more offended by Merlin’s inability to make up a greater variety of excuses, or by his own gullibility. Merlin decides to let him solve this riddle by himself.

“One more question,” Arthur turns his gaze back to Merlin.

“Yes?”

Arthur raises his stitched eyebrows and clearly enunciates: “Arthur _Knight_?”

Merlin shrugs and runs a hand through his already tousled hair. “I thought it was rather clever.”

Arthur thinks about it before he sighs and Merlin knows he’s done resisting for the day. “Well I suppose it beats Simpleton.”

To his own surprise, Merlin finds himself smiling. “That’s the spirit.”  

  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur leaves the hospital and enters a world of cars, hoodies, and coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me only how many years to finally finish this chapter? Oops. I greatly appreciate you reading it and messaging me though! Tbh that's the only reason I decided to stick with this <3

Battered and aching but undeniably alive Arthur thinks back. With measured steps and keen eyes he walks the path that led him to waking after centuries of sleep to clean sheets, tubes and beeps. He tastes metal on his tongue and Merlin’s voice breaks again and again.

_I’m a sorcerer. I have magic._

The shirt under Arthur’s chainmail is soaked in blood and sweat, and the cold forest air is humid with dew and Merlin’s tears.

Sunlight streams in through the blinds as Arthur finds himself stuck on the journey that was supposed to have ended in the darkness of Merlin’s feverish embrace.

Arthur’s hand grasps Merlin’s shoulder as both betrayal and loyalty flow from Merlin’s quivering lips in one choked-up stream.  

Understanding follows in death’s shadow and brings a moment of clarity in which Arthur accepts Merlin for who he really was. Yet the words leave behind a dull throbbing pain.

Arthur sighs and covers his eyes with an arm thrown carelessly across his face. New injuries push Merlin’s secrets aside for a while. There will be time to deal with them later, when his head isn’t shattering into tiny pieces.

Sun spreads its wings across Arthur’s lips and he tastes its warmth like on any other day in Camelot. Like that day he gave Gaius the royal seal for Guinevere.

They parted what, two days ago? It must have reached her already.

Arthur draws his arm away and blinks into the blinding sunlight that feels like needles in his eyes.

Except that Guinevere did not receive the news of Arthur’s death yesterday. Guinevere – his Guinevere – lived and died centuries ago, and Camelot went with her.

Guinevere is dead and Arthur lives, and yet it was but two or three days ago that the opposite was to be true.

He reaches for the history book Merlin left there. If he were to think objectively he’d say he likes it. Once the letters stopped feeling as foreign as they did on the first glance, Arthur’s been able to read about deeds beyond his wildest imagination. And he’d fought dragons and seen his father marry a troll.

It also had a lot of pictures, which was nice. Arthur liked them. They gave him a chance to fix his sight to something besides the off-white room he’s been stuck in for days now.

Merlin says Arthur is healing up nicely and that he won’t need to stay there much longer but that’s about all he says lately when he drops in. There are nurses and other doctors filing in and out of his room and some try to ask him questions. About Arthur, about Dr Emrys. Arthur usually feigns fatigue and they leave him alone. He wants to ask questions of his own but Merlin warned him to say as little as possible because if he says something weird they might lock him away and even cut his brain into pieces. At least that’s what Arthur got from what Merlin unloaded on him.

So Merlin says not to talk. But truth be told how well does Arthur know Merlin anyway? With every passing minute Arthur feels increasingly more distant to the Merlin of his memories and the other Merlin is a stranger.

This Merlin’s composed of nothing but warnings and health reports and dark shadows under his eyes. And Arthur, Arthur is stitches, and loss, and isolation.

Paper rustles under his touch as Arthur flips through the pages and back to the beginning. An illustration of a sombre looking knight makes him pause and look at the picture for the tenth time today.

The red of his standard reminds Arthur of home. That’s where the similarities end, though. The knight is foreign, from Arthur’s—no, Camelot’s future. The armour he’s pictured in would be best suited for jousting, Arthur thinks to himself. If he squints hard enough, lets the picture’s contours blur, he almost feels he knows the knight’s face. Clamber of a jousting match and roar of the spectators echo in his ears beyond the pressing silence of his room. When Arthur closes his eyes he can almost forget Camelot’s been long lost to history and myths.

~~~

Magic plus money equals might. Or survival of the immortal in a world of mortals but that’s quite a mouthful and Merlin’s quite fond of the alliteration in his original formula. Alternately magic can generate money and money equals might but that’s semantics and Merlin doesn’t care for semantics. Merlin cares for facts and the fact at hand is that throughout the centuries he’s gathered a considerable wealth and as a result he’s now richer than King Arthur. And unlike Arthur Merlin is also pretty decent at forging legal documents.

Once again Merlin’s covering Arthur’s tracks with magic to help him disappear. This time it’s not the Saxons or Morgana who could catch a whiff of them but something much worse. Bureaucracy.

How bad was Morgana, really? Merlin tilts his head back and frowns at the hospital ceiling, long fingers curled over edge of the desk behind which an administrative worker taps Arthur’s data into a computer.

All that Merlin’s memory unearths of Morgana is a poorly hidden sneer and spears of ice in a pair of pale green eyes. Both images remain disconnected from each other, they might as well not even belong to the same person. He supposes each comes from a different time in Morgana’s life. It’s an absurd mental image, like from a children’s cartoon. Just two eyeballs and a mouth floating in space, chilling.

Merlin snorts and the worker lifts his gaze from the computer screen.

“Dry throat,” Merlin says with an apologetic grin and a shrug of his shoulders. He coughs a bit for the show, and nods towards the computer. “Is that all you need?”

The man’s eyes flicker to the documents Merlin had handed to him. “Let’s see. Those were Mr Knight’s insurance details so… Yes, yes that should be it.”

Merlin nods and with a thank you turns around to leave the man to file away Arthur’s 21st century details. There’s still a lot to do. Inserting a man into a reality or erasing him from it is easy enough, Merlin has done it countless times to keep his longevity a secret from the world but every appearance and disappearance was always preceded by years of meticulous preparation. Arthur’s arrival was sudden, abrupt, and put both the patient and his doctor in unwanted spotlight. And that was just the outside world. On the inside Merlin has been fighting other battles. Or trying to keep them at bay while he deals with the more pressing of issues.

He hasn’t had the time for a proper freak-out yet. Hasn’t allowed himself to stay alone long enough for his thoughts to gravitate towards how he felt about Arthur’s return and, well, Arthur himself.

Recognising the man was one thing. The memories weren’t hard to reach either; as Arthur’s honest blue eyes scrutinized Merlin the past in them was sharp and clear like a mountain lake. No, Arthur is not the problem. Arthur is clean and good, untouched by the time that passed. In Merlin’s eyes Arthur shines with the magic of Avalon.

Arthur is not a man. He is a myth. Not a person, a mere fragile mortal. Not now, not again.

Myths are not supposed to walk the earth and offer their pure mountain lake waters for ancient bitter sorcerers to pollute with rotten memories of ages that moulded the world into shape. Myths are to be left untouched and only remembered on anniversaries.

Letting out a long sigh Merlin pauses right before the door to Arthur’s room and drops his gaze to the tips of his shoes. With his head bowed and shoulders hunched under the white medical coat he looks the very image of a man gathering strength to deliver a piece of particularly bad news. Well, looks are deceiving.

A quick rattle of knuckles against wood and Merlin walks in.

Arthur fixes his gaze to him, somewhat cold, like a puppy that’s been left alone for too long and is now acting offended. Merlin would have found it endearing had he wanted a puppy in the first place.

“Well?” Arthur raises his eyebrows in lieu of a greeting. Wow, okay. No change there.

“You’re ready to be discharged,” says Merlin. Arthur is right, why waste time with pleasantries. “Everything is taken care of, I’m taking you home tomorrow morning.”

“Home?” Arthur repeats with a spark of interest but it is raw and hard. “Where to?”

“My place. I have a flat here in Glastonbury, you can crash there for the time being.” Deep breath. It’s out in the open now, the weight of Arthur’s living situation and how far Merlin’s responsibility for it reaches. Merlin meets Arthur’s gaze and tries to discern what impact the information had.

“Great,” says Arthur simply and picks up the book Merlin brought him at an earlier visit. He waves it at Merlin, the soft cover bending with motion. “Do you have any more like this?”

“Uh, no. I don’t really have interest in history books, given my, y’know, my having being there for quite a lot of those events. I got this one for you.”

He spent hours browsing bookshops on his first full day off since Arthur’s return, pinning all his thoughts to the task of catching Arthur up on centuries worth of change and progress. “I suppose I could buy some more,” he says, “but I reckon it’d be easier to download some documentaries.”

A flash of annoyance crosses Arthur’s eyes like it often does now when Merlin utters another incomprehensible sentence.

“Oh right, sorry. Give me a second. Hm. How do I…” Merlin catches his bottom lip between thumb and index finger and stares off into distance.

“Quick as you like, Merlin.”

“Shut up. Alright, got it. They are like, um, theatrical re-enactments of historic events that you can watch at home. It’s this form of storytelling called films, I’ll show you.”

“I’m quite familiar with theatre,” Arthur says dryly.

“No but this is different. You don’t have to invite the actors into your home. Though I bet many people would welcome that alternative. It’s fun. There is an endless sea of films to pick from. They even made some about you, and Camelot.” Merlin isn’t a fan of Arthurian legend adaptations but their existence did not escape his attention. “I think there’s one in which I turn you into a squirrel to teach you about… um, I don’t know, hazelnuts or hopping, I have no idea, it was on some time ago at the children’s ward.”

And Arthur is looking at Merlin like he’s lost his mind. Perfect. Merlin has to figure out how to break off this weird familiar dynamic between them before it squeezes all air out of his lungs like an enormous fist. Too bad hotel rooms were out of question due to Arthur’s more or less obvious displays of anachronism otherwise it would be there and not Merlin’s apartment where Arthur would be moving tomorrow.

“Is that all, Merlin?” From Arthur’s tone he can tell Arthur is not blind to Merlin’s standoffish behaviour and doesn’t know what to make of it. Probably best Merlin takes the chance to set some ground rules.

“Just one more thing, and you’d do best to remember it.”

A muscle in Arthur’s jaw twitches and turns to stone.

“It’s John now. John Emrys,” Merlin says. “That is my name here now.”

“You expect me to call you John?” Arthur says slowly. An undercurrent of cold mockery rings through his voice.

Merlin shrugs. “Is it a problem?”

Arthur huffs and shakes his head, turning his gaze to the ceiling. His mouth is drawn into a thin line through which no sound can escape. Great. So that’s been dealt with. Walls erected, boundaries established. Still Merlin feels a tightness in his chest as he leaves the room only seconds later.

~~~

Arthur feels small. Strolling up and down the corridor in front of his former hospital room with no other personal items on his person but the history book he puts one foot in front of the other and focuses on little else but the pace he’s set. Not even the clothes he’s wearing are the same as that in which he arrived to the hospital. Just like the book the clothes are a courtesy of Emrys. Arthur checks his distorted reflection in the metal door of the travelling cube at the end of the corridor.

He’s looked better. He’d look better in his own clothes. With proper footwear. Not in – he opens his book and studies his own handwriting on the inner sleeve – _trainers_ . And _jeans_.

Arthur tucks the book under his arm and pulls the hood of his new (heavy, baggy, stupid) tunic/jacket over his eyes. Or attempts to anyway. The hood barely covers his brow. Still, it’s the best he can do to shield himself from gazes of the hospital personnel and other patients. Not that there are that many in this corridor anyway. Just him and an old woman in a long nightshirt watching one of those moving picture boxes he’s seen around. Arthur has sat there in the visitor/patient lounge with her for a while, studying the pamphlets and magazines scattered across the table and listening as the woman mutters snide comments to the boxed people.

“Who’s going to pay for that?” she gestures at the box. “Not me, I am not. Appalling, that behaviour. Didn’t use to be like this.” She flashes her pale eyes at Arthur as he rustles the magazines. “You wouldn’t know, of course, would you.”

“Um… I suppose…”

“No. Too young, you are. You believe this is just how things are, don’t you?”

Arthur lets his gaze drop to his hands holding the pamphlets. “To be quite honest, that’s been my attitude to most things lately.”

The women looks at him properly, taking in account his stitches and stiff posture from the ribs he’s broken. “You’re the memory loss lad, aren’t you?” At Arthur’s surprised expression she shrugs. “The nurses talk. Mind you, not to me but I can’t help what I hear, can I.”

Arthur smiles at that, unable to help himself.

“Poor dear. What did you forget?”

Arthur hesitates, partially because the question is a bit ridiculous. He shrugs again, avoiding the woman’s eyes.

“Did you forget your personal details? Your name, family? Girlfriend, maybe?”

Arthur looks up, Merlin’s warnings ringing loud in his ears. Arthur is tired of his voice though. He clears his throat and gestures to the viewing box in the room. “It’s more things like that.”

“What, the telly?”

 _Telly_. Arthur makes a mental note to write the word down in his book later and in the meantime thinks how to form safe questions. “The people,” he chooses his words carefully. “Should I know them? Are they… um, they seem to know a lot about what’s happening in Alb—in Britain.”

“Well they are TV anchors, luv, it’s their job to report. But see her?” the woman points at a pretty blonde currently speaking on _the telly_. “She’s not going to last, mark my words. The Sun’s having a field day with that one.”

Arthur is lost. He nods, mutters something vague and leans back, wincing at the pain his injuries are causing him. He watches the telly woman while the one sitting in the lounge continues talking, convinced Arthur’s listening.

“I feel like I know nothing about my own country,” he interrupts the old woman suddenly without intention. “My apologies,” he adds when she casts him an offended look.

“Not sure how that sets you apart from most of Britain’s youth,” she says with a cold twist to her thin mouth. Then, unexpectedly, she cackles and nods towards the telly box where a smart-dressed older woman is making a speech. “But keep it up and soon you’ll be moving in where she is now.”

“Where is that?”

“Downing street, luv. She’s the Prime Minister.”

“Ah. I see.” Arthur’s heart sinks to his knees. The conversation is drowning him in meaningless hum and drone of the modern era. Unconsciously he draws his book a bit tighter to his chest, hugging it with his uninjured arm.

In his own mind Arthur has shrunk to the size of an eleven years old boy. When Arthur was that age he was often required to attend his father’s meetings, listening to crusty old men rambling about politics and strategies, and when Uther looked at his son in the middle of the debate Arthur would do his best to look like he understood what was happening but he was certain Uther saw right through him.

Now the whole world is Uther watching him, evaluating his bearing and reactions to new information as it is flung at him without preparation. Watch and learn, Arthur. Show me what you’re made of.

Well, Arthur is made of kingly stuff, he knows that. Or, at the very least knightly. Yes, whatever flaws marked his time as a ruler of Camelot he never had to doubt his skills as a knight.

Arthur exhales, his head bobbing in a series of little nods. He’s a knight. There’s still that.

“Ah, wouldn’t you know it, Doctor Grumpy’s here again,” the woman mutters as her gaze wanders into the corridor. “Look at that scowl. Are you in trouble, dear boy?”

“Who—” Arthur turns around and sees Merlin marching down the corridor. “Ah.”

“Where’ve you been?” Merlin says without as much as a hello. “The nurses say they saw you riding the lift up and down the hospital. Is that why I just spent the last forty minutes searching for you?”

Arthur looks past him towards the metal box. _Lift_ , huh. Well that’s not accurate enough. _Lift and drop_ , maybe. He doesn’t reply.

“Afternoon, doctor Emrys,” the woman says with a cheeky edge to her voice. Merlin’s gaze snaps to her, startled as though he only now became aware of her presence. “Go easy on the boy, he’s had it rough. Don’t even recognise the Prime Minister. You do know he’s lost his memories, right?”

Arthur lifts his gaze to the woman to find her piercing Merlin through with a pair of very determined, unforgiving eyes. A corner of his lips twitches in amusement at the sight of Merlin’s chastised expression.

“Yes, yes I know that,” he mutters. “Arthur? Are you ready to go?”

As though he has a choice. Arthur stands up and meets Merlin’s eye with an impassive face. He lifts his chin to indicate Merlin’s to lead the way.

Merlin’s dressed in a black leather jacket and dirty-blue jeans, not his usual white attire. He pushes his hands in the pockets of the jacket, stretching the fabric like an enormous bird stretching its wings ready to take off and disappear. Except Merlin is limited to the constraints of Earth, and looks unhappy about it as he turns on his heel to head back down the corridor.

Arthur glances at the old lady to say goodbye, and follows his former servant.

~~~

“Careful around these. One of them is a reason why you were in hospital,” Merlin says under his breath, his fingers closing around Arthur’s elbow for a second as he stalls him before crossing the road.

“That’s them then? Cars? Wasn’t the one that attacked me bigger than this?”

“They are machines, Arthur, I told you. They don’t attack people, they’re incapable of independent thought.”

Arthur gives out a huff heavy with doubt, and Merlin almost smiles at that. “They seem much faster than horses,” Arthur remarks, seemingly transfixed by their speed as they watch couple go by.  

“And deadlier,” Merlin nods and then flings his arm forward in a lazy gesture. “There’s mine.”

They’ve arrived to a car park not far from the hospital and stopped in front of a blue Ford Fiesta. Merlin digs into his messenger bag for the keys while Arthur walks around the car, examining it as thoroughly as his injuries allow. Merlin can tell Arthur is dying to take a closer look at the tyres and chassis but cannot kneel or bend over easily so menacing distrustful glares must suffice.

Getting Arthur in proves to be less of a challenge than Merlin expected, and Arthur has a lot of questions about the ignition and internal combustion engine that Merlin doesn’t know how to answer. He suggests watching a documentary, and immediately changes it to getting another book instead, Arthur’s not understanding gaze piercing him with impatience.

They arrive in Merlin’s street within minutes, and then Arthur is standing just in socks on the cold kitchen tiles, watching Merlin fiddle about with mugs and rustle packets which are as far from magic as can be but to Arthur’s eyes seem to be threatening mysterious herbs and powders, so Merlin explains: “I’m just making coffee, do you want some? It’s a hot strong beverage from the south. We had nothing like it in Camelot, as far as I recall. It’s not alcoholic, and it’s not herbs either. Gives you energy. Interested?”

Arthur shrugs and sits at the kitchen table, his bent and scribbled-in book firmly in his uninjured hand, not unlike when he wielded a shield. “It’d be pointless to oppose to new things, wouldn’t it?” he says.

Merlin laughs. “So what do you think of Mithian?” he asks from the sink. Water rushes into the kettle and he casts a quick glance over his shoulder at Arthur who is playing with petals of a wilting dahlia in a vase on the table.

“Mithian? What do you mean?”

“Risa,” Merlin clarifies, shutting off the tap. “Doctor Miles.”

They measure each other with unreadable expressions.

“That’s Mithian?” Arthur asks. “ _Our_ Mithian? The princess I nearly married?”

Merlin nods, a very faint smile playing on his lips. “The very same.”

“I knew it!” Arthur exclaims. “I knew she looked familiar.”

Merlin laughs at Arthur’s unexpected burst of excitement, flips the kettle switch on and leans against the counter. “Wow, you’re quick to accept this.”

“If I can accept cars,” Arthur says. “Besides, I’m sure my tolerance for the impossible is about to run into a brick wall sooner or later. This is… Are you sure? That’s Mithian? I mean, she looks different and she’s-- you know, _old_.”

Merlin smirks. “Don’t let her hear you saying that. She’s only just turned forty.”

“No, but--”

“People age, Arthur,” Merlin comments while the kettle bubbles behind him. He reflects on how much like magic this hot water without fire thing is. They’re going to need so many books.

Arthur doesn’t seem happy with that explanation. He gestures towards Merlin, but when Merlin only raises his eyebrows, he says, “You didn’t.”

Merlin’s smile fades into an infinitesimal curve to his lips. “Oh, but I did,” he says, and turns his attention to one of the mugs on the counter, catching it by the handle and dragging it across the counter back and forth.

Silence settles, interrupted only by the increasingly louder bubbling of the kettle. Eventually Merlin swings his gaze to Arthur who watches him with a torn expression, and he says, “My looks haven’t changed, sure. But I’m different from them-- from her. For me this is still the same lifetime I started in Camelot. For Mithian it’s a new life. She died and was born again as someone else.”

“Does she know?” Arthur asks. “About her… I don’t know what to call it, her past?”

“No,” Merlin’s brow clouds in concentration. “At least not consciously. And that’s how it’s supposed to be, so don’t tell her a thing.” Something mournful flicks through his eyes when he speaks again but his voice is light and even. “I meet people I used to know in Camelot, from time to time. The energy of the town draws them here. It’s almost… nice… to see them again.” Merlin drops his gaze to his socks. He lets out a little sigh and falls silent.

Arthur is still, completely quiet, as though he believes that even at the slightest movement Merlin might close off again and this brief moment of sincerity will disappear like a deer into shrubbery. He’s not completely wrong. Merlin isn’t sure why he’s telling this to Arthur but the truth is Arthur is the first person ever he can tell about his secret life to, and he doesn’t seem able to stop himself. As long as Arthur’s listening Merlin may just as well speak.

“I spent some time with Elyan back in the seventeen sixties and seventies,” Merlin says in a thick voice. “His name was Miguel. We left Britain and lived in the south of Spain then.” He rubs his hand over his lips, and blinks. The memory doesn’t even feel real anymore. “And in the sixteen hundreds I found Lancelot again.” A corner of his lips twitches in amusement at that. “In the service of the king again, would you believe it? He was a French musketeer. Some people never change. He was one of my favourite encounters.”

There’s a spark of fondness in Merlin’s eyes that urges Arthur to lean forward across the table, and ask, “Who did you meet first?” in a soft voice.

Merlin freezes for a second, then looks up to meet Arthur’s gaze. “Morgana,” he says.

Arthur’s lips part like he’s about to say something but no sound makes its way out. Merlin seems to understand all the same.

“It didn’t go too well. I made the mistake of telling her about… us. Our past. We parted ways very soon after we met. I sometimes wish I--”

The kettle finishes boiling and cuts Merlin off. He turns his attention to coffee again.

Arthur props his chin on his hand, his thoughts rushing back to the doctor who was once a princess. As easy as it is to accept that it’s the same person, there’s still details that he cannot embrace without examining them first. “You look the same as always,” he says after a while, his tone bordering on accusatory.

Merlin laughs under his breath as he pours water into mugs. “Well,” he smiles. “I eat healthy, I don’t smoke, coffee is my only vice.” He turns from the counter and sets one smoking mug in front of Arthur, sliding into the opposite seat with his own. “It’s very hot,” he warns Arthur but brings his mug to his mouth right away, blowing at the black surface slightly. Arthur mimics him.

It’s at the first sip that Arthur places the mug on the table so firmly hot coffee splashes out. “How can you stand it?” he grimaces at the liquid as though it personally insulted him.

“You have to acquire a taste for it, I guess,” Merlin says, taking in the scent with pleasure.

“Or I could just pour it down the drain,” Arthur mutters.

Merlin takes a sip and sighs. “You’ve always been an ungrateful git,” he comments.

“Oi, watch it,” Arthur bristles. “You’re talking to your better here, _Mer_ lin. I could have you--”

“Hanged? Put in stocks? Flayed? Colourful imagination but poor resources, Your Majesty-No-More. Can’t be done. You’re just a common citizen, Arthur Knight. And it’s John, I remind you. Not Merlin.”

“John,” Arthur snorts and looks away, clearly dissatisfied. With coffee, with Merlin turned Emrys turned John, with Albion turned Britain. His stomach rumbles its agreement.

“Hungry?” Merlin asks, and mentally starts going through the fridge contents. “There’s some pizza in the freezer.”

“What’s where?”

Merlin sits up straight. “Oh. No. Wait. You’ve never had...” He brings the coffee to his mouth and takes a long, rushed sip. “No, no, your first pizza can’t come from the freezer.” He gulps the coffee down, burning his mouth in the process, and stands up from the table. “Get your shoes on, I’m taking you out.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while since I wrote this much and I'm rusty but here's the next chapter anyway. I decided not to sit on it for months like the previous one. Also, sorry about any inaccuracies about Glastonbury, it's been a while since I been there and I definitely took some artistic liberties. Thank you for reading and have fun :)

Glastonbury High Street bustled with life on the Thursday evening when Merlin and Arthur left the restaurant and made their way to the cultural hub of the town. It was an odd coincidence that Arthur would choose this particular town for his reappearance. Or maybe it was anything but coincidence - after all Britain’s New Age central has grown around Arthur's both supposed and actual graves. And that was the real juicy chunk of irony - Arthur, once a suppressor and bane of all supernatural became the very symbol of mystic tales and magic. Alongside Merlin, of course, but still.

"You're buried over there," Merlin says as they pass the Abbey. "Wanna see?"

Arthur casts his gaze at the ancient archway leading onto the Abbey grounds. "How am I buried there?"

"It's not you, of course. It's just part of the legend of... us. And Gwen. Her grave is there, right next to yours." Merlin's voice falters and dies on the last word as he catches the slight shift in Arthur's expression. "It's not her either," he adds quietly, as an afterthought. “I don’t know where she’s buried.”

"Then why would I want to see any of it?" Arthur asks tersely, and Merlin feels like an idiot for suggesting it. Arthur is not a tourist of his own life anymore than Merlin is. And mentioning Gwen's death - that's still news for Arthur. Too fresh.

"I'll show you other places," he promises and they turn the corner to High Street.

Merlin has braced himself beforehand against what was going to happen once he'd bring Arthur to the road lined from both sides with shops filled with more magical items and books than Uther ever managed to burn. Taking Arthur on a magic tourism journey is a risky move, and not because those crystals are seriously overpriced. But if Arthur stays in Glastonbury the encounter with the city’s general air is unavoidable, and it's better if Merlin's by his side when it happens.

He doesn't have to point them out. The shop names and windows offer enough information even for Arthur to realize that sorcery is alive and well here. _Man, Myth, and Magik_ on the previous street was met with a raised eyebrow but it’s not until they’re passing a shop called simply _Crystals_ (in case the window display isn’t obvious enough) right across the street from _Excalibur_ cafe that Arthur says something.

“Isn’t that my sword’s name?” he asks. “Mer-- _John_ , that’s my sword’s name. What is it doing on a shop door?”

Merlin thrusts his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “It’s rather famous,” he sighs. “Like I’ve told you, everything - or almost everything - in this town is somehow connected to you. Or to the King Arthur they imagine you to have been. If you travel out of town, you’re going to run into all possible businesses with your name plastered over them. And not just here. Everywhere. There’s some Pendragon dentists in Holborn, and Avalon schools, and Americans named a baking mix after you I think. There’s all sorts of stuff.”

  
“Baking-- What?” Arthur grabs Merlin by the arm and pulls him to the benches on the sidewalk in front of St John the Baptist’s church. “Why would merchants be using my name in their transactions?”

“Because it sells,” Merlin says, resting his hip against a bench. “Sex, darkness, and Camelot. The consumerism trinity that grabs you and doesn’t let go.”

Arthur looks unimpressed. Merlin faintly remembers this is the code for “cut the talk and get straight to explaining, I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on”. He casts his gaze across the street back to Excalibur and wonders where the actual sword is. Arthur must have left it in Avalon. Typical. After the lengths Merlin went to in order to acquire it.

“The name Pendragon is public property now,” he cuts to the chase. “So’s Camelot, Excalibur, what you can think of, it’s lore now. And lore belongs to the people. They can use it as they see fit.”  
Arthur chews on the inside of his mouth, visibly irate. “It’s my name,” he says and sounds like a petulant child when he does it. Merlin nearly snickers. “Nothing about the Pendragon dynasty is public property.” He looks positively affronted.

“The Pendragon dynasty died with you,” Merlin points out. “Hundreds of years ago.” He casts his gaze over his shoulder at the churchyard with its grass labyrinth and offspring of the Glastonbury Holy Thorn. Joseph of Arimathea who had planted the original miraculous thorn tree was also supposed to have buried the Holy Grail in Glastonbury, at the entrance to the Underworld. Merlin remembered no Grail from the good old days with Arthur but he knew somehow the chalice became connected to the legend too. Maybe this Joseph character, whoever he was really, had dealings with Avalon just as Merlin did. He wonders if there can maybe be a connection with that part of the legend and Arthur’s sudden reappearance but his knowledge of the myths is flimsy, and his memory shoddy. If the Dragon were here he’d probably hint at something, and Merlin would know where to look. But no.

Everything lay right at his feet here in Glastonbury yet at the same time remained utterly useless. The myth and magic surrounding them provided no solutions. It was draining.

“Look Arthur, when you died, you left something behind. People. Those who knew you. They took it upon themselves that you wouldn’t be forgotten. That your legacy would survive the ages. And they did a damn good job of it. Today, people want to honour that legacy. Even centuries later there’s still power in your name. Most people don’t get that. You’re a bloody rockstar is what I’m saying.”  
Arthur seems to consider that. He glances back to the cafe _Excalibur_ , then swings his gaze up and down the street, taking it in. “This is my legacy, huh?” he says as though tasting the words, rolling them over in his mouth to sample the flavour. “Who do I have to thank for it? You?”

“Not just me. Gwen, your knights, your people. But I won’t deny that my particular...hm, condition helped in preserving your story.”

Arthur slumps on the bench. Merlin watches for a bit while people pass them by but then he sits down next to him. The bench is cold with the chill of an early April afternoon.

“Tell me how it happened,” Arthur requests after a moment of silence. “What happened after I…” He swallows hard, pinning his gaze to the store opposite them. “...died. You went back to Camelot? Did you speak to Guinevere, did she do this?”

Merlin frowns at his hands. “I’m not sure what you mean, Arthur. I told you she worked to preserve your legacy. So… yes?”

“My legacy,” Arthur laughs without humour. “After a lifetime of hunting down all magical this is what I’m remembered for? I… sure, I had my doubts about the law from time to time, when it came to the druids, and Morgana, and if I had been given the time I would have probably thought more about your role in all this. But I did not change anything, not like you. I did not decriminalize magic. Guinevere did, didn’t she? She legalized it, and you had a part in it.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, stunned. Unexpected conclusion, maybe, but not entirely illogical. “Yeah, that...no. No, that’s much more complicated. You think because of what you see here…”

“Yes. I don’t know if it’s the druids or singular witches but it appears magic is legal in your Britain, John. Can you explain that?”

“That took much more than Gwen. And… she did actually change some of the laws regarding magic. Later on, as she grew old. She did not repeal them entirely but things got better under her rule. I was there for some of it. Living in Camelot was no longer for me, not after… well, I returned years later and saw her work. She did amazing, Arthur,” Merlin smiles at the memory. “She was incredible on that throne. You chose well. Gwen belonged there.”

Arthur smiles in return, nodding his agreement.

“But this is not her doing,” Merlin throws his arm at the entirety of the sorcery cluttered street. “This became possible only about a century or two ago. And only because people stopped believing in magic. To most it’s just fairytales.”

“Fairytales?” Arthur is shocked, his eyebrows fly up to where his hair falls over his forehead. “I’ve seen firsthand what power lies in these fairytales, how could anyone just ignore it? Only a fool would not believe it.”

Merlin leans back and slides a little down on the bench. “There’s several factors to why things developed the way they have. Do you want to know the details?”

Arthur nods. “I think it’s time you and I spoke a little more openly, wouldn’t you say?”

Talk openly about magic, with Arthur Pendragon. Merlin feels a familiar twinge of fear urging him to lie and disguise the truth, yet he suppresses it. Once he wished he could talk to Arthur about his magic, about other people’s magic, how breathtaking their different abilities were and how much more he longed to know about these skills and what made them tick, where they came from. Merlin of Camelot wanted this, at least. Dr John Emrys? He just wants to avoid a disaster with his oldest friend’s sudden reappearance and return to the peace his life knew before. So this talk, one he would have once given everything for, was only for Arthur’s benefit. Funny how things pan out.

“Fine,” he clasps his hands and interlocks his fingers, looking up to the sky momentarily. “So, we have people who believe in magic, and practice it. There’s not many, despite what Glastonbury would have you believe. Next, people who believe in it and fear it. That’s almost nobody. Most people fall into the category of non-believers who find magic a harmless alternative lifestyle for weirdos and hippies.”

“Weirdos is accurate,” Arthur mutters as though unable to stop himself. “Go on.”

“Hrumph. Alright, what next. So, you remember your father’s laws about magic. That barely changed at all through the centuries that followed. Throughout Europe - remember Europe’s location and general layout? Alright, just checking! - so, throughout Europe and later Northern America and probably other places, there were similar laws in effect for centuries. Not just one king who’d been wronged by a witch friend of his once.”

“My mother died because of--”

“Because of your father.” Their eyes meet for a moment, blue clashes with blue and for a moment lightning threatens to make itself seen. Then, however, Arthur lets out a sigh and looks away, back to the shop across the street.

“Yes,” he steps back, and sounds so small that Merlin is overcome by guilt for not having expressed himself more carefully. It’s been such a long time, though, he is quite disconnected from most of what happened in Camelot and how he ought to feel about it. Uther is no longer a real person to Merlin, he pales in comparison to other tyrants born ages later. He’s learnt since then that human resourcefulness and imagination are horrible, revolting, blood-curling tools of oppression that Uther even at his worst never knew how to use properly. Thank God and all the assorted deities, because he was bad enough.

“Well, because of witch hunts a lot of knowledge has been lost, and those witches who rely primarily on spellbooks and rituals as their primary source - which is majority - have been significantly weakened by that. Books were destroyed, people murdered, and a large part of old magic went with them. We were left with fragments of memory and new spells - in fact most practitioners today invent their own spells, but they’re not always thought through and don’t bear the desired results. That is why magic began to be thought of as a superstition, and ineffective. All that we’d once known was very nearly wiped out of existence.”

“Has it affected you as well? Your… powers?”

“No, not me. First of all, I was alive before the witch hunts erased most of previously available information from existence, and I remember the basics well enough. I’ve forgotten more about magic than people today ever knew. Not a problem. And second of all, I don’t rely on rituals and books. My power comes from a different source. From the stone, and the wind. From everything that surrounds me. I draw magic from magic itself.” His fingertips tingle as he talks about it, his magic thrumming along his skin as though attempting to be seen. Merlin knows that if he were to touch Arthur now, he would feel the power as a faint electric buzz. The question is though, how much would Arthur freak out over it? An open street probably isn’t the best environment for such experiments. Merlin keeps his hands to himself, working hard to contain the hum that started spreading throughout his body with this conversation.

“So, either way, we don’t show off our powers too obviously, lest people start hunting us anew, and all the rest of what we once had disappears. It’s a way of protecting ourselves. And that’s it, that’s why magic is seen as just a story for children.” He looks over at Arthur and shrugs wildly. “Get it?”

“It’s… odd, to see you speak of magic so openly,” Arthur says. “Where anyone can hear you.”

“I know. It’s strange for me too,” Merlin agrees. “It’s strange telling you this after all the effort I put into hiding it from you.”

Arthur hums and leans forward, propping his chin with his palm while his elbow rests on his thigh. “Maybe… don’t hide it from me now? Not anymore?” He looks askance at Merlin. “I want to know,” he adds entirely too softly.

“O-okay,” Merlin stutters, taken aback by the fragile sincerity of the moment. He wants to fight against it and say he’ll tell Arthur as much as he chooses to divulge and nothing more, but Arthur’s gaze is vulnerable and inviting, and Merlin cannot strike against that. “Okay, we can talk about it more, later.”

“Thank you, Mer-- _John_. Thank you, doctor.” And Arthur grins at the last word. “I can’t believe you are a proper physician now. And a good one! Being a servant was never really your calling, was it? You were a lousy servant, you know that.”

The old Merlin would have said “being your servant was my calling” or something to that effect, but that Merlin exists no more, and Dr Emrys takes pride in his work just as King Arthur’s servant used to.

“It took me longer than I care to admit to fully commit to medicine,” he says. “I dabbled with it my whole life but only took real interest in the 1800s.”

Arthur shakes his head and lets out a huff of a laugh. “You’re so much more than just magic. I mean, I am still struggling with that one, although it’s not on the top of my list of priorities right now. But I see you’re more than a wizard, if you understand what I mean. Gods, you’ve lived a life! And what a life.”

Merlin lets a small smile unfurl across his lips. “Do you want to take a look inside some of those shops?”

“Um, no!” A look of panic shoots through Arthur’s face and he immediately tries to compose himself. “I meant to say, I think it’s a little early for that. Not necessary. Some other time?”

Merlin laughs out loud and gets up to his feet. “Let’s go, then. We’ve had enough of fresh air for today, and you need rest.”

~~~

By the time he lies down to bed it’s nearly midnight and Merlin is knackered. He doesn’t have to get up early tomorrow so he doesn’t mind. He replays the day in front of his eyes while he’s lying on his back, one arm under his head.

It was a surprisingly good day, he reflects. He had a good time showing Arthur around. Felt a bit touristy at times, like having a friend over from a different country and trying to present your city in the best possible light. Merlin got sort of excited about being Arthur’s guide. He is not even going to try denying that. Their talk downtown was a little personal and what he’d expect to be hard to trudge through, but really it was easy. It was easy to talk to Arthur when he truly listened.

Truth be told, he was afraid, and not just a little bit. Before he picked Arthur up from the hospital everything fet strained and unnatural. Every conversation with Arthur Merlin was constantly on the edge, glancing over his shoulder and muffling his voice to escape potential eavesdroppers. And yes, he did not know what to feel about Arthur’s presence in general. Merlin had no interest in returning to what they once were. He had a fairly good life here, and every intention of protecting it.

On the other hand, today has turned out reasonably decent as far as introductions of ancient royalty to the modern age go, and Merlin has to hold down a wave of optimism surging through his chest. Maybe, just maybe, this doesn’t have to be as hard as he imagined. Okay, so Arthur has gaps in education, not a penny to his name, and he’s currently crashing on Merlin’s couch but so what. Merlin has a good couch. Arthur won’t be able to complain about his aching back after a couple of nights spent there. Couple of weeks worth of nights. Maybe, okay let’s be real, possibly months. It will be months before Arthur gets accustomed to his new surroundings enough to be able to leave. That’s… definitely a hindrance. Merlin is used to his own space, to lazily stretching his presence throughout the apartment like an enormous sleepy cat, and he hasn’t had a visitor in...um, years, probably. He’s not happy about someone encroaching on his privacy but he’s going to bear it. It cannot be so different from rehabilitating a patient. You throw buckets of energy into a broken body, and then you release it into the world. Like a little bird. A little bird with a king’s crown. Yes, it can work.

  
He rolls onto a side and a yawn works its way through his jaw. Slowly, bit by bit, he slips into sleep, happy in the knowledge that Arthur enjoyed the pizza earlier and that everything is on a good way to … he doesn’t actually know where to but that doesn’t matter, does it? He doesn’t have to have everything figured out.

After all, what damage could Arthur’s presence do? Could it be worse than the last time?

Could it be just as bad?

Merlin’s very existence used to shield Arthur’s life like a suit of armour. He stood there, day after day, between Arthur and the evil forces clawing their way out of the deepest corners of hell, and whatever they threw at Arthur Merlin took it. Arms open, chin up, Merlin let the swords and spells fall upon him like rain. But eventually, even the best of armours rusts over under unrelenting pellets of rain.

Merlin was rusty. He is rusty still. His joints creak when he moves, and plates of red-brown dust peel off him as he breathes. His lungs are dry sacks of crumpled paper, rustling when air rushes into them. He’s not a protector. He’s something ancient and forgotten by the time itself, a shard of glass that water gradually smoothed into something devoid of sharp edges and anything useful at all.

He turns over in his sleep, eyes screwed tight as dull pain begins to throb in the back of his head. He dreams of rocks rushing from a cliff, their weight just that all-deciding smidgen stronger than any magic he could exert to stop them in their fall. He dreams of smirks hidden by tresses of raven hair. He dreams of age-old scales covering an enormous body, and a head lowering itself from its height to deliver the words, “Your and Arthur’s fates are bound together by forces stronger than death, young warlock. You cannot escape your destiny.”

“But I did,” Merlin protests, “For more than a thousand years. So it is possible. I cannot do this again, I won’t do it again.”

“Unwise words, young warlock.” The words creak in the creature’s throat like an iron gate opening and then a column of fire is rushing towards Merlin from a cavern filled with giant sharp teeth.

Merlin throws himself to the side, staggers to his feet and darts off, away from the blaze until his steps stop in complete darkness.

Merlin’s chest is rising and falling in swift succession, unseeing eyes trained at the room he’s standing in. Where is he? His breath rattles in his throat, and suddenly he’s not even sure it’s air he’s swallowing. The way it presses against his nose and mouth reminds him of the poisonous gases they used in one of the last great wars.

Is he back in the trenches?

The door slams against the wall as a tall figure rushes through towards him and all Merlin can do is raise his arms to shield himself against the imminent attack.

“Merlin? What is it?” The person grips him by the shoulders, fingers digging painfully into his flesh, and Merlin knows he’s heard the voice before. Thousands of years ago, and just yesterday. That doesn’t help his sense of dislocation though.

He tries to free himself from the grip to get some space, to breathe, but he finds himself restrained, pressed against a firm chest, a pair of equally strong and firm arms drawing him closer in a tight embrace.

Merlin’s right cheek is pressed against someone else’s face, and the voice drops in volume, gaining a familiar and soothing quality. “It was just a dream, you stupid clot. It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m here, you’re okay.”

“N-no, let go of--” Merlin manages to get out, and he digs his fingers into the mass of muscle enveloping him, pushing himself away. “Get off me!”

The arms slide from his back, and to Merlin’s elbows where they stay while their owner takes a step back.

“Merlin, it’s me,” he says quietly. “It’s Arthur.”

The words echo through Merlin’s head, loud and overlapping. Now he can see Arthur, albeit wrapped in shadows and pale grey light streaming in through the window. His blond hair is tousled and sticking at odd angles as he stands there barefoot and wearing Merlin’s pyjamas. His mouth has a worried set to it. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Merlin doesn’t answer at first. He stumbles back until his legs hit the bed and he collapses at the edge of it, staring somewhere a few inches above the floor. His breathing begins to slow down and even, and Merlin runs a hand over his sweat-covered forehead and into his hair. “Yeah,” he breathes out, “It was only a dream.”

Arthur seems calmed by that statement. “Of course it was a dream,” he smirks. “God, you’re like a five year old, aren’t you?”

Merlin mumbles something that should have sounded defensive but comes out defeated. He plops down onto his back and stares at the ceiling. It’s easier than looking at Arthur. There’s something prickling at his eyes, and his throat closes up at the sight of him so maybe he’s just going to look elsewhere for a while. “Go back to sleep, Arthur,” he says hoarsely.

“I will,” Arthur promises, an edge of amusement in his voice. It runs Merlin through like a knife. “And maybe this time we could do with the bare minimum of screaming and stomping. Do you think you can handle that?”

Merlin mutters something non-committal, and brings his legs onto the bed, grabbing onto the blanket and rolling onto his side, giving Arthur his back.

Arthur chuckles and seconds later the door closes behind him. Merlin’s eyes, on the other hand, remain open.

There’s a bad taste in his mouth left by the dream, and he cannot shake it. He’s scraped raw and hollow, just an empty husk dropped onto the bed. He forces a deep breath into his overworked lungs, too aware of Arthur’s presence only a few meters away. All the optimism he felt before falling asleep is stripped from him, peeled off like an apple skin.

Gripped by fear, Merlin makes himself a promise. No matter what happens, this time he’s not sacrificing everything for this… this virtual stranger in his living room. He’s worked too hard to just throw it all away.

No. No way. Not this time.


End file.
